Assange announced his intentions late last year and is now putting himself forward as a candidate of the newly formed WikiLeaks Party from the state of Victoria in the Australian Senate as part of the September 14, 2013 federal election. The party has yet to be formally registered with the Australian Electoral Commission and does not show up yet on its website.

The domain names wikileaksparty.com and wikileaksparty.org—neither of which are live—are registered to Tim Neal of Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia—264 kilometers (164 miles) southwest of Melbourne. Neal appears to be a deputy national president of the Australian Democrats party. Neal also seems to have been a candidate for Senate in the past, according to a Facebook page.

The WikiLeaks founder was granted asylum and has been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for several months now. There, Assange is under near-constant surveillance by the Metropolitan Police. Should Assange leave the embassy, he would likely be apprehended and extradited to Sweden, where he faces questions in a criminal investigation of alleged sexual assault.

His supporters say that should Assange win the seat and be unable to fulfill it remotely from the embassy, he could nominate another person to take it in his stead.

John Shipton, Assange's father and an Australian architect, will be the chief executive of the new party.

"I think there's a lot of support for Julian and even more support for what Julian stands for," Mr Shipton told the Australian Associated Press. "The party stands for what Julian espouses—transparency and accountability in government and of course human rights."

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar